Early cretaceous birds with crops found in China

The crop is characteristic of seed-eating birds today, yet little is known about its early history despite remarkable discoveries of many Mesozoic seed-eating birds in the past decade. Scientists from Institute of Vertebrate ...

New 'shieldcroc' species of ancient crocodile discovered

A University of Missouri researcher has identified a new species of prehistoric crocodile. The extinct creature, nicknamed "Shieldcroc" due to a thick-skinned shield on its head, is an ancestor of today's crocodiles. Its ...

Study clarifies mystery of crocodilian hemoglobin

It can pogo-stick along at 50-plus miles per hour, leaping 30-odd feet in a single bound. But that platinum-medal athleticism falls by the wayside at a sub-Saharan riverside, the source of life and death for the skittish ...

The unknown crocodiles

Just a few years ago, crocodilians – crocodiles, alligators and their less-known relatives – were mostly thought of as slow, lazy, and outright stupid animals. You may have thought something like that yourself the last ...

Key genes may contain insight into evolution of dinosaurs

(PhysOrg.com) -- Birds and alligators have little in common, other than that the first is sometimes the other's lunch. That hasn't always been the case, though, and that's what attracts Arkhat Abzhanov.

Alligator relatives slipped across ancient seaways

The uplift of the Isthmus of Panama 2.6 million years ago formed a land-bridge that has long thought to be the crucial step in the interchange of animals between the Americas, including armadillos and giant sloths moving ...

Crocodilians bite with the best

Crocodiles can kill with the strongest bite force measured for any living animal, according to a report published Mar. 14 in the open access journal PLoS ONE.

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Crocodilia

Filozoa

Crocodilia (or Crocodylia) is an order of large reptiles that appeared about 84 million years ago in the late Cretaceous Period (Campanian stage). They are the closest living relatives of birds, as the two groups are the only known survivors of the Archosauria. Members of the crocodilian total group, the clade Crurotarsi, appeared about 220 million years ago in the Triassic Period and exhibited a wide diversity of forms during the Mesozoic Era.

Although the term 'crocodiles' is sometimes used to refer to alligators, caiman, and gharials, or even to their distant prehistoric relatives the marine crocodiles, a less ambiguous vernacular term for this group is 'crocodilians'.

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